Listen and Learn
by Myaru
Summary: FE10, post-game.  Naesala regales the heron family with stories about his conquests in Begnion, only to be outdone by the least-likely candidate.


**Listen and Learn  
Author:** Myaru

_I wrote this in January, and have hated it since then. But since it's already done, I may as well not default on this claim._

_Rafiel's name for Lehran isn't meant to be literal – just a form of respect for an elder._

_

* * *

_

…

Summer in Serenes was slow and hot the first few years, and Lehran heard from certain sources it was even worse in southern Begnion, where the weight of stone buildings and cobblestoned roads blocked the natural breezes his ancestral home was blessed with - wind and whispers, which had nothing to do with beorc, or even herons or bird tribes. Whispers only he could hear, still, by virtue of age or long study, whispers he did not need the magic of his heritage to listen to and understand. They said the air was dry and the trees were thirsty, but even galdrar could do nothing for that.

Their voices quieted somewhat when he entered buildings, of which there were three now standing in the forest where a circle of ruins used to be; he sat with Rafiel and Reyson in a chamber on the east side of the residence set aside for the heron family. One wall opened to the forest, its silk screens folded back to let the air in, and beyond it shimmered a thin stream and the flowers of an impromptu garden: yellow rose, white angels' breath, lilies, marigolds. Sweet pea and bougainvillea drifted from the eaves in a tangled, curly curtain that drifted in every gentle breath of air. Reyson sat with his back to a tall, narrow window, the sun lighting up his wings, while Rafiel sat beside him on a stool with needle and thread in hand, a half-made robe for his father folded over his lap like a snowy blanket. Chrysanthemums bloomed up and down the hem in his careful stitches.

"This will go faster if you'll just come with me," Naesala was saying from a brighter corner of the room. His wings flicked against the dangling vines, and he looked like a great, capering shadow standing against the brighter backdrop of the forest. "They're suckers for a pretty face, except maybe Sanaki. She had _him_ to warp her standards."

This was said with a jerk of the hand to Lehran, which he tried to ignore by concentrating on the letter Naesala would be taking with him. Not much of consequence happened in Serenes according to the standards of beorc politics; there was nothing to apprise the empress of - no changes, no gossip, and they'd already announced Leanne's condition. That meant repeating what the raven was surely capable of saying himself: they needed building material. They needed paper, because there were not enough hands to make it in the forest. They wanted an appropriate price for these items, rather than the inflated, insulting numbers they were given in the territories bordering Serenes. Lehran worded these demands as prettily as he could, painting them on thin paper with a stiff brush, one of his tomes underneath for support.

"I thought you had all of Begnion's aristocracy begging at your feet," Reyson said, leaning back to look out the window. Bees droned from beyond, just past the dangling vines. His project - one of his own coats, because his skill with a needle was shameful - was rumpled on the stool next to him, and his needle gleaming in its pincushion. "You said something about having to juggle three of them at a time and your own popularity being the bane of your existence. I don't see why iyour/i pretty face isn't adequate for the job."

Naesala might have shrugged, or folded his wings; he looked stiff. "They know me a little too well."

Reyson's _hmph_ spoke volumes. "Take Lehran."

_Hell no_, Naesala said, and Lehran almost dropped his pen. "I would rather not drown in a vat of boiling oil," he said, flicking his gaze up long enough to meet the young prince's eyes. Not serious, Lehran decided; he was leaning on the sill, chin in hand, not even facing the rest of the room. _I'm bored_, his posture seemed to say. "Her majesty's decrees are absolute, you understand."

"It's a shame," Rafiel said. "You know that place better than the rest of us."

"It is a shame," Naesala repeated. "He was almost as popular as I was. I bet the ladies especially would be willing to forget a little thing like the Judgment if only _Lord Sephiran_ would pay them a private visit or two. Work crews? Resources? No problem."

"'Popular' isn't the word I would have used for you," Lehran said. "Unless you mean to imply your popularity as a target."

Reyson lifted his chin from his hand. "So he's lying?"

Naesala's wings snapped open and closed. Lehran left his pen on its rest in his writing box, on the next stool over. "Naesala has quite a reputation, it's true. Half the noblewomen in the capitol want to kill him - or at least tie him down for their own use." He looked down at the paper, angled it to see if the ink had dried yet, but the last sentence still gleamed in the light. He'd expected to see a wobble in the letters he'd embellished, a reflection of the tremor he'd felt in his hands when writing out _To Her Imperial Majesty Sanaki Kirsch Altina, thirty-seventh empress of Begnion_, but all of his lines were straight and even. "Women are naturally irritated when they discover their toys are consorting with other females."

Reyson rolled his eyes and leaned on the sill again to stare outside. Rafiel pursed his lips, looking down at half of an embroidered chrysanthemum. "And my sister is marrying him. This is-" He looked as if he'd bitten into a lemon.

"Be at ease, Rafiel," Lehran said. His hands hurt- he opened a fist and closed it, wondering why. "He isn't very good at philandering-"

"Hey!" He snapped his gaze back to Naesala, whose eyes narrowed. "You have no room to talk, unless all that posturing about abstinence was a lie. And come to think of it-"

"Oh shut up." Lehran stared at the words again: _Her Imperial Majesty_. They pressed upon his chest, as if they were rocks squeezing the air from his lungs. Sanaki would have had something to say about these ridiculous claims to fame. "If you were doing your job correctly they'd be begging for more instead of setting bounties on your head."

"I can't believe we're having this conversation," Reyson said, finally turning away from the window to sit down again and looked at his coat with a slight frown. "I never wanted to know this much about beorc mating habits, thank you."

"I don't think this has anything to do with mating," Rafiel said.

Reyson picked at his uneven stitches. "They why on Tellius would they be after him?"

The angle of Naesala's wings - high, arched, like a startled cat - and the drop of his jaw made a chuckle bubble up in Lehran's throat, which he suppressed and swallowed. His face refused to remain neutral. She would enjoy this, his empress; she would be giggling and hiding her face in his shoulder right now, and he hunched with the effort of holding in an echo of that laughter. "So sorry," he said to the raven, a hand covering his mouth. "I didn't mean to expose your sham."

Naesala's shadow advanced, wings cramped together and looking like they might snap outward at any moment to block the rest of the light. He leaned on the wall beside Lehran's stool and bent to show too many teeth with his smile. "You're a bigger liar than I am," Naesala said.

"Let's be fair - it would be a close contest." Lehran set his letter aside and smoothed his robe, chin down, though he watched the raven through his eyelashes. _Easier to get angry at the exile, is that it_? he wanted to ask, but that might truly irritate Naesala, and Lehran didn't want another confrontation. "But when it comes to plying the unsuspecting with one's charms, I win. I've been doing this centuries longer than you have. Save your amateurish bragging for meetings I'm not involved in."

Naesala reeled back, laughing. "With a stick-up-the-ass goddess like Ashera ordering you around? We're not talking about tea parties here, Lehran - unless Oliver was telling the truth and you put out more than a few cookies and a smile."

Why was it always Oliver? Lehran stood up slowly, yanking his robes straight where they'd creased, and lifted his chin to look at the raven from an angle he knew the other man hated - a condescending sideways stare he'd seen directed toward himself many times while in the capitol. "In the year beorc scholars call Z-75," Lehran said, "about one hundred years before the great flood, Goddess Ashunera sent me to investigate trouble just east of Tellius. Up in the mountains somewhere..." He rolled his eyes up to the ceiling, rubbing his cheek, tried to remember what the city was called. The boys fell silent.

Naesala crossed his arms. "And this has to do with whoring yourself out- how?"

Lehran sighed, rolling his lips together, and tried not to give in to the temptation to call out his vulgarity. "The queen had locked herself in her room and wouldn't let her husband touch her. Adultery was the first suspicion that came to mind, but after a few visits I could see the problem was much simpler- she welcomed _me_ with open arms, you see. I thought perhaps she was bored."

"This is going to encourage him." Rafiel's voice came faintly from behind the wall of Naesala's dark wings.

Maybe it would. Lehran put on his brightest smile. "I spent at least one lunar month showing her husband how to-"

"Grandfather, _please_."

Naesala's eyes narrowed. "You're making this up."

"Not in the slightest." Lehran leaned slightly to the side to see Rafiel hunched over his embroidery, hands still. "I'm sure Rafiel has seen the murals in their mountain tomb - the ones depicting a 'winged being' who blessed the royal family with fertility." He watched Reyson's eyebrows hike, Rafiel's shoulders slump while he groaned, and Naesala twisted around, glancing from them back to Lehran. His expression said he wasn't convinced.

"Well?" Reyson said, looking at Rafiel, leaning and ducking his head to meet his brother's eyes. "Is it true? Are there murals?"

Lehran bent to slip the letter to Sanaki into his book so it wouldn't fly off the stool and be damaged. Paper was difficult to replace, especially when they insisted on varieties made from rice- renewable resources. Ink, the truly opaque pigments that came from Daein, was scarce as well as costly. She might forgive him for sending a private message on creased or imperfect paper, but there were standards to be met in public. Scribes would see this; the new senate leader would see it, and so would anyone present when she opened it. When Reyson asked why he cared - why concern himself with beorc opinions, especially the ones in Begnion - Lehran didn't know what to say. _Appearances matter in politics_, perhaps. _Criticism of my continued existence is rife enough as it is_.

"The frescoes were worn and broken in many places when Nailah took me to see the tomb," Rafiel said when the silence had stretched a breath too long, then sighed. "His name did survive, however. The one he used in that region according to our histories."

Naesala rolled his shoulders in a languid shrug. "I can't fly over there to confirm it, so it doesn't count."

"I _can_ confirm that fitting you and your buzzard wings through Lady Tigana's tower window is an impossibility," Lehran said, straightening, "so there is another of your myths deconstructed."

"_Buzzard_?" Naesala turned back to him, spreading his wings to block the sunshine and flapping the ends inward. His mouth stretched in a grin. "So you _did_ sleep with her."

"Who didn't?"

_That's it_, Rafiel said from the background, _I'm leaving_, and he rose with his arms full of silk, the top of his head and his long white wings visible past Naesala's figure, and his sandals flapped on the stone floor as he marched out. Reyson laughed under his breath, snatched the pincushion Rafiel had dropped, and hurried past the screen to catch up with him. Two displaced blue jays screeched past the window like blue darts. The sweet pea vines swayed, disturbed, their kinked and curled shadows stretching across the floor.

Naesala chuckled, and the deep sound expanded into a laugh whose edge reminded Lehran of a cackle - a cackling crow. _Poor Rafiel_ came out half-intelligible. _So predictable_-

Lehran bit the inside of his lip to keep from joining the raven in his amusement, held his shoulders rigidly still- yet he could not hold back his smile.

.


End file.
